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The maddening mess of airport codes [video]

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Re: The maddening mess of airport codes [video]

#2
The entire world of airline coding (as in "encoding") is fascinating to me: there are all kinds of ancient semi-human-readable formats like ACARS[1] and IATA Teletype[2] that are still pushing data around. Not the mention standard meal codes[3], like BLML for "bland meal" and CLML for "celebration cake meal."

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACARS

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_teletype_system

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Air_Transport_As...

Re: The maddening mess of airport codes [video]

#3
You think airport codes are bad, try airline codes. The IATA standard is still only two (2) letters, leading to insanity like recycling codes after one airline dies, meaning the meaning of the code is time-dependent, and, even worse, "controlled duplicates" where two airlines are intentionally assigned the same code at the same time, since they fly in different parts of the world and pinky-promise to never overlap.

https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/35907/do-two-ai...

Three-character ICAO airline codes are much better and used almost exclusively in actual flight ops, but for passengers it's still two-character codes all the way.

Re: The maddening mess of airport codes [video]

#4

The entire world of airline coding (as in "encoding") is fascinating to me: there are all kinds of ancient semi-human-readable formats like ACARS[1] and IATA Teletype[2] that are still pushing data around. Not the mention standard meal codes[3], like BLML for "bland meal" and CLML for "celebration cake meal." [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACARS [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_teletype_system [3]: http…

UMNR, INFT, CBBG, AVIH, ARNK. Just some off the top of my head.

Re: The maddening mess of airport codes [video]

#5

The entire world of airline coding (as in "encoding") is fascinating to me: there are all kinds of ancient semi-human-readable formats like ACARS[1] and IATA Teletype[2] that are still pushing data around. Not the mention standard meal codes[3], like BLML for "bland meal" and CLML for "celebration cake meal." [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACARS [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_teletype_system [3]: http…

Add to that (what I understand to be) extortionate data rates for ACARS/ARINC messages, that rival data sent to the Hubble / JWST (if you remember that story from a couple years ago).

Re: The maddening mess of airport codes [video]

#6

You think airport codes are bad, try airline codes. The IATA standard is still only two (2) letters, leading to insanity like recycling codes after one airline dies, meaning the meaning of the code is time-dependent, and, even worse, "controlled duplicates" where two airlines are intentionally assigned the same code at the same time , since they fly in different parts of the world and pinky-promise to never overlap.…

Funnily enough, CGP Grey also made a video about that[1].

[1]: https://youtu.be/jfOUVYQnuhw

Re: The maddening mess of airport codes [video]

#7

The entire world of airline coding (as in "encoding") is fascinating to me: there are all kinds of ancient semi-human-readable formats like ACARS[1] and IATA Teletype[2] that are still pushing data around. Not the mention standard meal codes[3], like BLML for "bland meal" and CLML for "celebration cake meal." [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACARS [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_teletype_system [3]: http…

#3 has RFML - Refugee Meal.

I wonder what that is.

Re: The maddening mess of airport codes [video]

#8

The entire world of airline coding (as in "encoding") is fascinating to me: there are all kinds of ancient semi-human-readable formats like ACARS[1] and IATA Teletype[2] that are still pushing data around. Not the mention standard meal codes[3], like BLML for "bland meal" and CLML for "celebration cake meal." [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACARS [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_teletype_system [3]: http…

I've always wondered about the IATA meal code CAKE, and what it might have involved.

Re: The maddening mess of airport codes [video]

#10
post #8

The entire world of airline coding (as in "encoding") is fascinating to me: there are all kinds of ancient semi-human-readable formats like ACARS[1] and IATA Teletype[2] that are still pushing data around. Not the mention standard meal codes[3], like BLML for "bland meal" and CLML for "celebration cake meal." [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACARS [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_teletype_system [3]: http…

I've always wondered about the IATA meal code CAKE, and what it might have involved.

It sounds like you should take a flight on SAS and find out!
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